by Frank Holmes, reporter
Donald Trump hasn’t been out of office for two weeks yet, and the RINO establishment is already telling MAGA Republicans who will take his place in their party.
Failed 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney named the next generation of GOP leaders—and they’re washed-up liberals or practically unknowns.
“There’ll be new faces and new voices, perhaps some from the past,” the two-timed presidential flop told CNN.
Like who? “Like Gov. Chris Christie,” Romney said.
Is there a huge movement to draft Chris Christie out there somewhere?
Then Romney named “new” leadership. Maryland Gov. “Larry Hogan is a new face on the front,” Romney, who is now a senator from Utah, said on Sunday. “Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse—I think those individuals will help define the Republican Party as we go forward.”
Romney’s dream team of post-Trump GOP leaders have two things in common: Besides Tom Cotton, they’re mostly NeverTrumper RINOs – and besides Christie, no one has ever heard of them.
Christie became a household name as the governor of New Jersey, when he brashly took down powerful union leaders live on TV. In the Tea Party era, some people thought of him as the pre-Trump version of Donald Trump.
But Christie made voters squirm when he talked about how he and his wife “used birth control—and not just the rhythm method.”
Christie may have even cost Romney the presidency eight years ago, when he praised—and literally embraced—President Barack Obama during Hurricane Sandy.
Megyn Kelly later told Christie that many Republicans who saw his “bear hug with President Obama” really “felt that you hurt Mitt Romney, a week before the election in what appeared at that time to be a very tight race.”
Christie left office under a cloud of scandal when it came out that Christie closed part of the George Washington Bridge in 2013 just to hurt a political opponent. Talk about impeachable offenses!
After his term ended, Christie started a new career as a contributor for ABC’s “Good Morning America”—a show run by liberal former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos.
Christie used his job to swipe at the man who beat him in the 2016 primaries on the air.
The former governor said there is “a lack of evidence” that there was any voter fraud in the 2020 election, calling Trump’s allegation “an absurd idea.”
Chris Christie says the Trump legal team's “legal theory" is "an absurdity."
"The reason the Supreme Court is not taking this is not because of a lack of courage. It’s for the same reason that every court has thrown this out — it’s a lack of evidence.” https://t.co/pUvrfxqSMo pic.twitter.com/IGwp4mxJuo
— ABC News (@ABC) December 13, 2020
What about Larry Hogan?
The practically unknown governor of Maryland is a liberal Republican—there are a few out there—who supported both attempts to impeach President Donald Trump.
Hogan backed “an impeachment inquiry” in late 2019 over the president’s phone call with the president of Ukraine.
During the latest Trump impeachment, Hogan tweeted that he “will always be proud of my father for putting our country before party and his own career as the first Republican to support impeaching President Nixon.”
“Tonight, I am proud of” Liz Cheney and two other Republican congressmen who supported impeaching Trump.
I will always be proud of my father for putting our country before party and his own career as the first Republican to support impeaching President Nixon. Shortly after his stand, the president resigned.
Tonight, I am proud of @RepLizCheney, @RepKinzinger, and @RepJohnKatko.
— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) January 13, 2021
Hogan had already ripped into Trump for “border fear-mongering,” totally flip-flopped to support abortion, and said he would not accept the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.
Then there’s Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a conservative but a NeverTrumper—and one of just five Republican Senators who voted against Rand Paul’s bill to dismiss the latest impeachment effort of Donald Trump after Trump has left office.
Mitt Romney was another one of those five.
There’s bad news for Romney and his list of pretenders to the throne: Donald Trump isn’t going anywhere—and most Republican voters don’t want him to.
According to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll, 81% of Republicans approve of Donald Trump—and 50% of Republicans say Trump should play a “major role” in the future of the Republican Party.
Trump has already gotten himself in a position to come roaring back in 2024, as he promised in his farewell speech.
The 45th president has established “The Office of the Former President” in order “to advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda” of his presidency.
He’s endorsed Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his longtime White House spokeswoman, in her bid to become the next governor of Arkansas.
And he said he’s going to lead Republican efforts to take back the House and the Senate in 2022.
Who’s going to lead the post-Trump Republican Party? Donald Trump.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”